Adobe Symposium 2016, the annual digital marketing conference that drives the future of marketing and business transformation through Adobe Marketing Cloud, will be held today in Singapore. More than 1,000 business leaders, marketers, digital marketers, publishers, advertisers, and content managers are expected to attend to hear from Adobe Executive Vice President for Digital Marketing Brad Rencher and Suresh Vittal, Adobe Vice President of Marketing Strategy for Digital Marketing, along with leading brands including Kellogg, Globe Telecom, Singapore Media Development Authority, ANZ Banking Group, Mastercard, Great Eastern Life and StarHub. Conference speakers will explore the challenges and criticality of creating an integrated, exceptional customer experience.

“Adobe Symposium is the largest event of its kind in Southeast Asia, reflecting the demand for information and ideas in this area, and I’m excited to welcome local and international innovators to talk about the experience-led business,” said Paul Robson, President, Adobe APAC. “Those brands are laser focused on customer experiences at every touch point, and already pulling ahead of competitors by creating a new normal for consumers. Experience is the new competitive advantage.”

Driving the Experience Business

Digital has set a new bar for customer expectations. Customers today demand and expect compelling, personalized experiences along their journey with a brand – from brick-and-mortar stores to mobile apps and websites. It’s essential that brands lead with experience and transform into an Experience-led Business.

“At Great Eastern Life, we have steadily built up our digital platforms to enable us to more proactively engage our customers and at the same time provide them a differentiated customer experience,” said Clement Lim, Group Head, Digital Marketing and Loyalty Programme, Great Eastern Life Assurance. “In this increasingly competitive business landscape, we believe that customer-led digital transformation is the way to go. Our partnership with Adobe has helped us transform the Great Eastern brand from a passive brand to an active and more customer-centric brand. We have seen increased traffic to our new website with noticeably increased levels of engagement.”

At Adobe Symposium, Adobe announced several new capabilities to help brands become an experience-led business:

Connected Shopping Experience Advancements: According to a recent eConsultancy report, APAC organizations are nearly twice as likely as their European and North American counterparts to say that more than half of their overall ecommerce revenue is transacted directly on mobile devices. Adobe Sneaks, which offers a peek at the innovations percolating inside Adobe Labs, will feature the unveiling of the “adaptive store” kiosk that integrates personal shopper information and data-driven product recommendations into the offline shopping experience.

Virtual Reality Capabilities: Adobe will showcase how it is enabling the end-to-end delivery of video experiences across virtual reality devices. New capabilities within Adobe Primetime include ad-driven monetization for VR, the support of playback of DRM-protected content (using Adobe Access) for both Virtual Cinema and 180/360 VR video scenarios and device support for Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Support will come later for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

AdobeExperience Manager and Adobe FrameMaker Integration: Consumers are becoming even more sophisticated in how they research throughout the purchase process, and are increasingly referencing technical documents like user manuals. This new integration helps brands manage and publish complex technical content across all channels, devices and formats.

Conference Highlights

Adobe Symposium features more than 50 sessions across four tracks focused on topics integral to the experience-led business: data-driven marketing, customer experience, cross-channel marketing, and marketing insights for technologists. Adobe partners including WPP Alliance, Deloitte Digital, Mirum Singapore, SapientNitro, Verticurl and VML will also participate in the event.

This year, Adobe Symposium will feature a Tweet-for-Good campaign to raise up to $10,000 USD for billionBricks, a non-profit innovation studio providing shelter and building infrastructure solutions for the homeless and vulnerable.